Conventionally, vessels such as boats, yachts, and ships are equipped with navigational equipment configured to enable the captain to navigate the seas accurately and quickly. These devices include a Loran Navigational System and a Global Positioning System (GPS) configured to triangulate a position with two or more space satellites. Many automotive vehicles, phones and aircraft are also now equipped with navigational tools, such as a Global Positioning System (GPS).
Unfortunately, each of these conventional devices requires electricity to function. In the event of a battery failure, electrical failure, loss of signal, or other technical issue, individuals can quickly lose their bearings. This remains especially true during storms, high humidity or severe dry static prone spells day or night, one lightning strike to the mast of an ocean vessel can destroy all electronic navigation equipment on board. The latest recognized threat by the United States Navy admits its fears of cyber hacking of the navigation system and the GPS and thus considering reviving old traditional methods.
In the unfortunate event of an accident or similar unfortunate circumstances, individuals can be left without a navigator or the modern day conventional electronic navigation equipment. A fast, easy, and accurate method to navigate by that anyone onboard the vessel could understand and use would be invaluable in such a scenario. Such a method could preferably be learned in just a few minutes and performed gaining a fixed location in even less time. Standard Celestial Navigation is fast becoming a lost art. Few schools and organizations even teach it anymore. The United States Navy has dropped the requirements from their curriculum in 1998. Yacht clubs only teach celestial Navigation as a novelty but most don't bother anymore due to the lack of need or interest. The few people that take the time and expense to learn the skills required to practice celestial navigation and the ones that do often forget the skill due to a lack of use.
GPS and other electronic devices fail, Satellites fail, and batteries fail, often due to natural electromagnetic interference, cyber hacking, lightning strike, wet equipment, poor weather, accidental or purposeful interference (such as a pulse bomb or EMP which can render all GPS and other electronic devices inoperable). In an emergency, a simple and fast manual approach is needed to determine longitude without the complex education in standard celestial navigation conventionally required a set of yearly government publications of charts and tables, skills interpreting those tables, error correction sheets and a knowledge and system of how to identifying a visible star when only a few or one is visible, geometry calculations, Soft or no horizon visibility or electronics and the use and knowledge of a sextant. It is rather complex.
A primary disadvantage of standard celestial navigation is that all measurements must be taken from the horizon. As such, “Celestial Navigation” though reasonably accurate when conditions allow, may have been more appropriately named “Terrestrial Navigation”, as measurements are based off of angles from the Earthly horizon. The horizon is the heart and soul of celestial navigation. There are many problems that can occur when using the horizon for navigation, including a lack of visibility due to land, cloud banks, atmospheric refraction, low lying haze, lack of moonlight, a phenomenon called “Soft horizon,” ocean mirages, and other horizon distortions. All these detrimental conditions occur more often on the horizon.
In addition the process may require as much as 20 corrections for each star needed as one works through work sheets. A few other very important corrections to standard Celestial navigation are the need for Dip and sextant corrections. The Dip correction takes in account the distance the observer is above the water which is imperative and requires tables or a trigonometry to correct. This is very important and can give the navigator errors of hundreds of miles depending on if one is in a life raft, giant cargo ship or an aircraft. With Stellar Navigation, this is not necessary since the horizon is not utilized in determining Longitude, and no work sheets are required for basic operation.
Celestial navigation requires very intensive training and education, extensive error correcting work sheets, possession and the knowledge of deciphering the multiple government publications with the tables of stars locations (GP) for every second of the year, and an education on how to interpret those tables, along with an apparatus or publication on locating and identify the stars by name. Without identifying the name of a visible star to measure, one cannot search the multiple publications for the position of that star at that date and time. The problem with standard celestial navigation method is the tunnel vision into the tables, charts and work sheets leaving you void of the big picture. With Stellar Navigation, one can literally look into the sky and eye-ball his or her approximate location when using a GMT/UTC time piece.
Additionally, in the event that one cannot see the horizon, which is common at sea and especially in an aircraft, one is lost if using celestial navigation alone to navigate. At aircraft altitudes, the horizon is farther from the observer, and is therefore much more difficult to view through haze. Celestial navigation does not provide a means using stars to derive longitude without a sharp unobstructed horizon. Many things can prevent one from seeing the horizon, such as distant cloud banks, interrupted horizon from land masses, inadequate light at night and the phenomenon called a “Soft Horizon.” Soft Horizon is caused by light refraction of different density air layers. Even if one can see what appears to be a sharp horizon, it may not be true. The phenomenon is very common on highways, deserts and the ocean, created by large temperature differences across a span of water or land. This causes a mirage effect, making highways or deserts look as though there is lake with water ahead, or buildings and vehicles suspended in mid air. On the sea, this creates either a soft horizon not distinguishable from the sky, or simply shows what appears to be the horizon several degrees below or above the true horizon and can mask very large objects such as icebergs, cargo ships and even complete land masses.
In fact, the light is reflecting off a layer of air right above the surface that is different in temperature than the layer above it creating a mirror, reflections of distant objects just as if it is a reflection off a mirror lying flat, or water. Light traveling through two different layers of air with different densities due to different temperatures will diffract at different angles creating distortions and a mirror effect and show reflections of distant features like mountains and stars near the horizon, making the area below the true horizon full of stars fooling the navigator in thinking the horizon must be much lower. This phenomenon causes distant ships to appear triple the height in some cases, or huge tall cargo ships to look like flat oil rigs in other cases. Sometimes, islands with beaches will appear to be stretched upward and to be surrounded by a great cliff. The Invisibility effect is the most interesting, and is not limited just to locations close to the Horizon. As the two distinct density layers of air are diffracting light differently, a blind spot is created where an entire ship can be sitting on the horizon, and yet the ship simply is not visible depending on the temperature of the water compared to the air. With enough distance from the hot and cold layer diffracting light at two different angles, the spread over many miles can be significant enough to hide even mountains that are on land masses on the horizon such as islands and are most prevalent in the desert and oceans. This is actually common at sea when ships in the open sea steam towards cold or warm ocean currents as an example of traveling west across the moderately warm northern Atlantic and then crossing the south flowing ice cold Labrador Current carrying icebergs. This is will assuredly cause severe mirage and mirror effects year round. Thus, these are some of the hazards of relying only on the horizon for navigation.
Alas, there is a need for a new navigation system and method that enables a beginner, novice or master navigator to quickly and easily to determine the longitude and latitude of his position without need for reference of the horizon, nor need for extensive training in celestial navigation to employ the stars for basic navigation.
Modern Celestial Navigation though quite effective in the hands of a master, requires such an expert to accurately gain a location fix. Without knowing the name of that star, the navigator is lost with celestial navigation alone.
Conversely, Stellar navigation of the present invention uses a known single reference position from published NASA data associated with a specific date and time which is easily converted to present time and date by the diurnal action of the stars in the circumpolar region of the sky. This is similar to recognizing that the 12:00 position of a clock is strait up at the top of the dial without the presence of numbers. The stars rotate like the hour hands of a clock rotating around a single point. This motion is called the diurnal motion and the area where the stars rotate in a full circle like the hour hands of a clock face, unobstructed by dipping below the horizon during a full 360 degree rotation is the called the circumpolar region of the sky, this is our clock face and we call the sky clock. It can be used to tell accurate time, date and longitude and what the stars position will be at any date and time within the Common Era past, present and future. The Emergency Longitude Slide Ruler takes full advantage of this with precision.